Category: Salomon 100 Mile Challenge

The challenge begins

9 comments

As agreed with Warriorwoman, today is the start of our Salomon XT Wings Challenges. Mine being to run 100 miles in a month, and her’s being something completely mental and which maybe she is out doing right now if she’s finished taking pictures of little birds that are probably now dead.

I decide to make it a day of freebies and decide to do intervals with my free Kara Goucher Endurance Boost workout mp3 and I put on my free Salomon t-shirt

and I go to put on my free Salomon XT Wings shoes

but then I remember that red and green should not be seen so I put on my usual trainers and I take my free Nike+ Sportband as I’ve been sent another one without a defective screen and I use my new pouch instead of doing the Joggerblogger bodge job

and I go out and stand where the waiting-for-a-Garmin-signal-wall used to be and a scruffy man comes out of a scruffy house and I wonder if that’s where Bad Cat lives because the man is as manky as Bad Cat and Bad Cat’s behaviour is that of a pikey and I set off to do my intervals and as I get past the stables a cyclist comes up and looks like she’s going to turn but then she doesn’t look like she’s going to turn and I’m thinking ARE YOU GOING TO TURN OR WHAT, MAKE YOUR MIND UP YOU STUPID COW and she eventually turns and I carry on and there’s a sign on the boardwalk about cyclists but I don’t stop to read it and just hope it says that there’s been a change in the law and that from 1 June 2008 instead of banning alcohol on the tube, they’re going to ban cyclists from everywhere instead and as I get to my favourite bridge there’s a little kid at the bottom of the ramp and it’s just standing there in my way and I’m thinking GET OUT OF THE WAY STUPID KID and then there’s a baby Irish Wolfhound and it reminds me of the Irish Wolfhound my parents had and it also reminds me that the girl at work has a baby tortoise and I thought it was illegal to have tortoises over here and I’ve never seen a baby tortoise and I go over the bridge at the marina and I have to walk because there’s lots of people on it and there’s another kid in my way and I’m thinking is it small-children-in-the-way-day today or what? and I see a train and think hurrah, the trains are running today, that means Kate can get here for the official opening night of the new theatre pub up the road and it’s a glamorous Hollywood themed night and I told the owner who invited me to the opening that I’d wear a dress. Fuck.

Today’s route

Stats
Distance: 3.44 miles
Time: 31:04
Pace: 10:12 m/m
Calories: 346
Free t-shirts: 1
Free shoes: 1
Free MP3s: 1
Free Nike+ Sportbands: 1
Scruffy men in scruffy houses: 1
Cyclists taking 15 years to decide whether to turn or not: 1
Baby Irish Wolfhounds: 1
Kids in my way: 2
Glamorous Hollywood themed nights: 1
Music
Let’s Get It Started (Black Eyed Peas)
Don’t Phunk With My Heart (Black Eyed Peas)
Timebomb (Beck)
Say Goodbye To Love (Kenna)
Somewhere Only We Know (Keane)
For The Girl (The Fratellis)
Lay Down The Law (The Switches)
Where It’s At (Beck)
The Middle (Jimmy Eat World)
Sorry Sorry (Rooney)
Come To You (Carina Round)
Chase The Light (Jimmy Eat World)
Stop Stare (One Republic)

A walking commute

2 comments

Sex and the City has a lot to answer for.  At least, Paramount Comedy does by showing it every night.  I mean, what’s a girl to do?  Stay up late watching it and drinking wine?  Exactly.  But staying up late drinking wine and watching telly is not conducive to good running performance, whether that be a 10k race or a 10k running commute.  Maybe I should just give up 10ks.  Hmm, now there’s a thought.

Or perhaps I can blame it on not being mentally prepared for a full commute tonight, as my workmate said she was going to walk half of it with me but come 5:30 this afternoon she comes over and says she’s wimping out and getting the train home instead.  Tsk, what a lightweight.   I walk up with her to Moorgate and then I’m waiting about three hours for my Garmin to pick up a signal but it doesn’t look like it’s going to so I start without it and just time myself instead and it picks up a signal somewhere along the way and I walk most of my commute like a complete weed, which is a bit crap really because I’ve got more races coming up; the Salomon XT Wings Challenge encompassing the challenge within the challenge which starts on Saturday; and then we’ll have Juneathon again which I will leave Joggerblogger to tell you about if he remembers not to forget about it again.

Stats
Distance: 5.65 miles
Time: 1:20:19
Pace: 14:13 m/m
Calories: 453
Late nights drinking wine and watching Sex and the City: too many
Running breaks: a couple
Music
Duran Duran
The Mission
Transvision Vamp
B52s
Delorean
Echo & The Bunneymen
Sisters of Mercy
Arctic Monkeys
Manic Street Preachers

Running commute #2

5 comments

The man on XFM this morning said that summer was over and now all we had to look forward to were clouds and rain and apart from thinking I hate the man on XFM, I think typical just as I’ve re-started my running regime and then I remember that I like running in the rain although if I had to choose between all day rain or all day sun then I would say all day sun please, hell yeah, and so I pack my running stuff and grab my umbrella and go to work and tell my new workmates I’m going to run home and they don’t look at me like I’m mad, in fact they think it’s pretty cool and one of them says she’ll walk part of the way with me if I want to walk one day and I say how about Tuesday, where can you get a train from? and she says Hackney Downs and I say I can go that way, it’s three miles from here, is that ok? and she says yes so my next running commute is going to be half walk/half run, unless I cheat and jump on the train at Hackney Downs too.

But today isn’t a half walk/half run and maybe cheating-by-jumping-on-the-train-at-Hackney-Downs day, today is a proper running commute day but by less than two miles I need to stop and go to the shop and get a drink but not a can of Stella because only complete nutters like the man on the tube last night who threatened me and Tracey drink Stella, and the man at the counter says hello, how are you? and I say I’m fine thanks and he looks at my black eye and says have you been fighting? and I say yeah, you should see the other guy and he says really?  and I say no, not really, I fell over and he says shit, sorry about my language and I say that’s ok and he says were you on a bike? and I lie and say no, I was running, instead of saying no, I was drunk and fell over because once again I forgot wine equals hospitalisation and I pay for my drink and continue on my commute and remember to go the right way this time and I go down the hill again which is as much fun as it was on Tuesday and as I get to the footbridge at the marina a motorbike goes up it and I think I haven’t seen that before and he rides his bike down the steps on the other side and I get round the bend and there’s a cyclist having a piss on the edge of the path and I think you dirty peasant and I go under the bridge and then I’m being lazy and walking and I skip through my iPod trying to find  an uplifting song to spur me on but nothing does and I’m skipping through and skipping through but there’s still nothing and I can practically see my house and so I think I’d better start running again so I do and I get home quicker than last time although that may have something to do with not going half a mile out of my way by not following my map properly.

And the more eagle eyed of you may have spotted the new widget on the right hand side.  And the even more eagle eyed of you may have spotted that I’ve been called “he”.  I haven’t had a sex change.  Honest.  However, I have been set the challenge of running 100 miles in a month.  Warrior Woman has also been set a challenge which I’m sure she’ll tell you about at some point on her blog but in the meantime she has thrown down the gauntlet and challenged me to a challenge within a challenge which shall see us undertaking our challenges at the same time in a mini-competition kind of thing because obviously it’s not enough for her to keep beating me at Scrabulous on Facebook.  Now she wants to out-run me.  Hmm.

Stats
Distance: 5.98 miles
Time: 1:11:03
Pace: 11:53 m/m
Calories: 600
Shops stopped at: 1
Motorbikes going over footbridges: 1
Cyclists pissing on paths: 1
Times went the wrong way: 0
Times looked at map: 1
Walking breaks: a couple
Challenges: 1
Challenges within challenges: 1
Music
Cardiacs
Bobby Conn
Devo
Faith No More
Levellers
The Cure
Foo Fighters
Hole
Missy Elliot
Carter
Soft Cell

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